Who Runs Bartertown?

The USA is the world's superpower and has been since 1991.
Since 2001 this status has been maintained and sustained by the frightful, absurd, War On Terror, which has entered its fourth administration with a bloated, clumsy state military punching wildly into its second decade.

The enemy which arrived in the nick of time to justify bellowing belligerence for a further generation, was of course, Al Quaida, which was originally a privately funded group of mentally ill people prepared to die for death's sake.

Of course, they were then threatened with death.

This reckless decade of gross overkill and mostly unwarranted intervention via foreign adventures in 'nation building' (grotesquely killing people for their own good) has been funded by background workers who took over from the flagging US economy; when over-production of bullshit and hot air led to a rebalancing of the economy in 2008, it was found that the casual, callous exploitation of China's captive workforce by international business (which thinks production is the same as whoring without conscience), had created a new giant on the world stage.
Red China.
But the US state has clung to its comfort blanket of cozy assumptions about the World Order, and looked to China to be a fat, stupid, timid cypher which would endlessly fund the 'willing' in their botched, stupid and hypocritical crusade against gun-toting savages in far off places.
The savages themselves are amazed at the embarrassing spectacle of elephants chasing a couple of ants among the millions in the dirt.

And now, China, talking softly and carrying the big economic stick, has just made the USA lose face.
The Suez Moment of the American Empire has arrived in the form of an air zone which China cannot justify, and America dare not deny.

Now all that remains is to see whether America will lose face a little, or whether China will apply lashings of clown make up and reduce the USA to a bunch of totally defeated assholes.

Believe me, they can. They can make the vaunted might of the USA fold faster than a Soviet Republic in a drinking contest with the late Boris Yeltsin.

Kerry was squirming for his new masters over Iran this week.
Get ready to see a lot more squirming.

Who runs Bartertown?

Hey Kids! Wanna Kill People For Real?

Tired of Mortal Kombat 7 already?
Well now you can leave high school and join the elite team flying the US Drone Programme.
Within months you can go from killing pixels to killing people. Really.
But it's like gaming! And you get paid for it!

Next time you see an explosion, you know that it's for real, with instant replay to see the limbs being blasted off and the blood spilling.
But it's not a chamber of horrors, and the innocent people who die (we think only 25% of the casualties are innocent, the rest are all suspects) probably deserved it for being in the wrong place.
Their homes! Ha!
No, but honestly, there's absolutely no risk! You don't even need to go overseas. Or understand anything. Or anything.
And you absolutely will not be a murdering coward, killing people in their beds without taking any risks whatsoever. No.
You'll be a respected member of the US Armed Forces, the biggest and best Armed Forces in the world, the Armed Forces that are going places. Meeting interesting people. And killing them.
And you'll be bringing freedom to people who despise you as cowards and hate you for being murdering bullies, so you'll win every battle and lose the war.
And hey, as long as they reject our sort of freedom, we'll just tell you to kill some more.
And when you look in a mirror a few years later and see yourself, we'll provide limited medical assistance and counselling for your impending insanity.
But hey! If you make it through that, there are plenty of opportunities and subcontracts for people who say and do the right things!
And at the end of the day: you were only obeying orders.

The Amusement Of Small Minds.

Once you come to the attention of the 'state' it would seem that they hang around you.
Like a millstone, a bad smell, or a starstruck kid.

The psychopathology of the actors - dare I say agents? - in the pursuit of futility, the pursuit for pursuit's sake, could keep an army of psychiatrists uselessly employed for decades.

Take my experiences. No really, listen to this.

I was surrounded by such horror at the turn of the 90's that I wanted to draw attention to myself; I actually wanted to show the world what scum lived among us as allegedly human beings, so to inform and so to protect.

In the end I protected myself; in the end I escaped.

But when I started, yet again, from zero, I found myself wondering if I had attracted any attention during my small-chip adventure. I didn't know.
But one thing followed another, and I found myself worried all the time about my friends and family.

Sure enough, the threats - real threats - appeared to invest my paranoia with a flavour of reality.
This and this alone was all it took to drive me mad.

Now.
Every so often, something nasty appears in the (forlorn) hope of keeping me that way.
And each time it does, I get a glimpse of the truth.
1999 - I badly wanted to go to North America. Sorry, said the Co-op shop assistant at the local airport, we've run out of insurance forms.
'Please wait' said a recording of my employer's voice on the phone when I rang Manchester Airport. Then the line went dead.

You get the picture? I'm beginning to.
When I got back from North America(the plane going was delayed while two people came on board to inspect my passport - just mine), within two weeks there were three police cars in the street. They arrested me under the mental health act, presumably because the plan estimated I'd be 'mad' by then.

Forward to 2013; I took another trip to Canada. Never mind the outrageously evil look I got from the little man at the airport and a few other things I noticed, not that I give a damn any more.
No.
Last night my twitter tweets went down well with actual MP's and were favourited by the local press.
This morning my landline was busier than a Menwith Hill secret conference; when trying to ring out, I heard an American voice telling me the number was unavailable, through all the distortion.

Of course, the British now operate under a strict legal framework, as do the Americans, which is why they do each other's spying for them.

What I want to know is this: what do these demented obsessives hope to gain and/or learn?

Play The Stinking Game. Or Else.

Ender's Game is currently showing in cinemas.
I've seen the trailers. Plenty of fake reality with 'technology' and 'explosions', while Harrison Ford looks serious.

Of course, the fate of 'Humanity' (that mewling, sucking mass of helpless flesh) is at stake; they are threatened with annihilation by 'aliens', who did a half-arsed job at the first attempt.
Surprise surprise. Only the world (US) military can save us by preparing in advance for the next incompetent annihilation visit, after which presumably the aliens will get tired of blowing us up and bugger off for another 70 years.

And what is the preparation? Take a young boy and train him and train him and train him, so that he can save us.

Human sacrifice is back, Mayan style.
Except they're not bashing kids heads in on a hill to appease the gods, they're sending them out into space where we don't have to watch, hear or see, and all we have to do is trust the generals.

Sounds to me like Starship Troopers played straight.

I could be mistaken, but this looks like yet another video nasty which has no place in civilisation save as an educational tool in the study of mass neurosis.

Game over.

Fine

"Do you know who I am young man?"
"No."
He took a deep draught from his beer.
"Who the Hell are you?"
"My name is Feinstein. Senator Feinstein!"
The older man paused for effect, smiling in an indulgence he was already indulging.
"Oh. Oh! Senator..."
"Feinstein. How do you do?"
"You're the guy sicking the NSA on everybody's backs right?"
He put his beer on the counter with a thud, and smiled ironically.
"I believe that our security agencies should....."
"They're not here."
"Not as such."
"Let me stand in for them."
"A-ha...ha..."
"What's in your wallet?"
"What?"
"What's in your damn wallet?"
"That's none of your business!"
"Damn right it is! I'm the TSA!"
"NSA!"
"Don't mind if I do!"
He tripped the old man up and turned him upside-down, while he protested ineffectually.
"Really! Really!" said the senator as coins, condoms and a wallet fell onto the dirty floor. Whereupon the younger man placed him on a barstool.
"Let's see what's inside eh?"
"NOoooooo!"
He slapped the senator's hand away.
Out of the wallet fell a public telephone card-advert for personal services.
"You're not supposed to see that!"
"Yes I am! I'm the TSA!"
"NSA!"
"Don't mind if I do!"
He took twenty dollars from the wallet.
"Two beers! One for me and one for my friend!"
He smiled again.
"That's a mighty fine coat you're wearing!"

Ding Dong, Ring Out The Bells.

Harvard and Stanford say aye!
Does this mean the world is safe again?
Now the Republicrats have recovered from their schizophrenic episode and taped their hive-mind back up their arses, can little Joey run around with his dog and bb gun in the backwoods again, safe from all that ungoverned nature?

Will there be a freshly roasted chicken and a doctor in every dining room?
Will the S&P rise so high that businessmen will ascend to high ledges from the street wearing nothing but galoshes on their feet?

Will the clouds blow away, revealing the bright blue sky of a late October Summer, where unseasonal birds sing sweetly and tears no longer fall?

Yes, yes and oh yes!
When the fake president signs the bill presented by the fake politicians, which enshrines everything we hate, give or take a little trivial tinkering, then all will be well again as the US claims 'no tax rise' and the shrinking chickens are carved up by proud family men all over using Chinese cutlery.
Of course, the real trick is this: the US can borrow a lot more. They are printing money to buy their own bonds. This means that they are burying inflation under cover of a gigantic asset grab.
And that is the nasty secret they hope to prolong for one more year.

Show's over, chaps. Pick up your cans and pizza boxes, make a space for next year's comedy.
Only next year, the pizza ration will be smaller, the beer weaker, it will all cost more, and you will all be getting healthier.

Debt Default? Perish The Thought.

The news companies are doing what they do, dramatising facts that haven't happened yet, spreading fear and despondency over the potential for the US government's budget tiff to become a real item which threatens a 'debt default' in the near future.

The US government is playing along, sticking to the script and dramatising things like war memorials and National Parks.
Obviously without government, nature becomes a vicious man-trap that people must avoid, and the war-dead will rise again and start killing afresh.

It's all so predictable it could have been scripted by a Hollywood hack writer who is jaundiced by making screaming turds look like heroes on the Silver Screen, and now wants to make the screaming turds riding America into the sunset of Freedom look like heroes.

Sit down on the porch or in front of the TV with your six-pack Americans; order that pizza and relax.
The nation ( and the world of course) will be reliably saved by the third act, no need to worry, the only thing you have to wonder about is the twist, the false ending, the bit where the true hero and the true villain are revealed.

But hey, don't sweat it. The audience gets to vote on who has the most talent at the end of the series in 2016 and the current favourite won't be back whatever happens.

Meanwhile the bastards wield the Tofu fist in the Titanium glove behind the scenes, making sure that the hard sell goes down.

Don't worry if you don't want to buy. They aren't fussy, they'll take your money anyway, so long as you like aircraft carriers and leaders like foreign junkets.